


The Four Suns

by Runeless



Series: Into the Fire [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Calliope the Evil Overlord, Dave Harley - Freeform, Divinity, F/M, Fireverse, For humans, Gen, Half genderswap, Hemospectrum Flip, Jade Strider - Freeform, John Lalonde - Freeform, Rose Egbert - Freeform, Which means everybody has different parents according to how much money those parents made, parentswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/784184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runeless/pseuds/Runeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sidestory set in the Fireverse. How the four Beta kids came to serve Lady British.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. From Humble Beginnings

**The Four Suns**

**Part the First:**

**From Humble Beginnings**

**== > Be Rose Egbert.**

                In order to be Rose Egbert you must understand something- Rose Egbert has spent sixteen years, ever since birth, longing for something you cannot name.

                You know this pretty well because, well, you _are_ Rose Egbert. Sixteen years of being you make being you rather easy, if no less complicated than it ever was.

                And at the central core of Rose Egbert, of _you_ , is a feeling that you are waiting to receive something unimaginable.

                You do not know what it is you are waiting _for_ , what it is you are longing _for_ , _what_ it is you seek, precisely, but you know very well that you _are_ waiting, longing, seeking. You do not know why, however. Daughter of a conservative, sensible businessman, you have never wanted for anything. Oh, you could use a pony, you are certain, but really you have never lacked for anything basic or even extraordinary that you truly wanted. It’s what Christmases and birthdays are for, after all- why, today alone you received a cat for a present, a wonderfully cute little kitty that you have named, in a fit of ironic passive-aggressiveness, Maplehoof, a pony’s name if a pony ever had one. Your father, bless his heart, seemed to completely miss the sarcasm implied, which simply makes it funnier to you.

                He is such a forthrightly honest man. Your father has never had a moment of irony in his entire life, never indulged in sarcasm or satire. It is an intensely admirable trait, and it means you trust him absolutely, but perhaps as counterpoint and reaction, your own little form of teen rebellion, you have raised snark to a high art. Your father never notices, which has only encouraged your form, thinning the line between criticism and praise, enjoyment and abhorrence, to such a degree that even you aren’t entirely certain what you mean and what you don’t sometimes. You love him dearly, even if he is the sort of man to leave handwritten notes with purely earnest messages on them that he _completely means_.

                (You love your dad. Silly man. Great man. He is a good father and there are few who can receive that praise.)

                But beyond Christmases and birthdays and your father’s buying power and honesty both is the mystery of what it is that you _want_ , Rose Egbert. You do not know what they are and you do not know why you want, you only know that you _want,_ that you are _waiting_ for something, that you should be something more than this. It is the feeling you get when you close your eyes and look up at the sun, and see the white and red through the flesh of your eyelids, that sense of heat on your face and mysterious, hidden power that your eyes can just barely perceive, a future hidden in brightness. Whatever it is you are looking, waiting, _hungering_ for, it is a change inside yourself, or perhaps a change to be bestowed upon you, and you do not know why you even _think_ that way, much less have it as a central part of your psyche.

                You have identified the impulse in others, seen it through novels- fantasy novels, the worst thing that has ever happened to you. Your father, bless him, bought you the Lord of the Rings trilogy when the movies came out because he thought you might be interested, and you were immediately captivated. _Here_ was what you’d been looking for, you thought- great happenings, powerful shadows, brilliant light. Something _more_.

                …It faded, soon enough, just a pale shadow of whatever it is that you are still longing for, but the novels help, they shoosh the noise in your head and gently pap it down into something more manageable. The best novels involve people from the real world being transported elsewhere- and they are _always_ drivel, all of them, but the want is there so strong that it _hurts_. You should not be sixteen years old and full of that child’s fantasy, that core immaturity that says ‘my life is not my life, my parents aren’t my parents’. You aren’t some changeling child from your favorite fantasy novel, that’s… that’s _stupid_ , it’s weak and you hate yourself for it.

                (The hate changes nothing.)

                It’s probably why you’re so interested in psychology. Having this longing inside of yourself for so long despite your conscious mind’s apparent wishes has led you to question _why_ you are the way you are, and thus you constantly pick the brains of your fellows, seeking answers to their reasons why in hopes it will shed some light on the great unknowable mystery that lies at your own core. Not that you have that many friends- oh you know some school chums, to use John’s bizarre speech patterns, but your _real_ friends number three total and you have only ever met them through your computer.

                Speaking of John, more properly John Lalonde (an unfortunately rhyming mixture of names), he is your favorite subject to pick over. He’s doofy and, frankly, kind of stupid, loving horrible movies with the same sincerity he brings to everything else he does. Of all people, he reminds you of your _father_ more than anyone, to the point that if they were the same age they’d be most likely indistinguishable; excepting his different hobbies and different dentition, he is determined to be the most exact clone of your father anyone has ever been, a feat made all the more impressive by having never seen the man except for momentary glimpses through a generic laptop camera’s imperfect vision. The cherry on top is that John is a New Yorker raised by a perpetually drunk rich woman, which should have scarred him more than it apparently has; all of these factors should make his mimicry impossible, yet John Lalonde excels at the command **- > Be Rose’s Dad.**

                And yet…

                There is something off about John, as if he were more important than he is. Knowledge he possesses that he shouldn’t, an airy way of being that makes him seem a fool when he’s really a magician- and his love of magic tricks strikes you as a snide sort of joke he’s not shared with anyone else. Something cruel in John that’s absent in your father, a cleverness and… edgy… nature that you find alternatively attractive and repellent. To be blunt, every time you talk to John, you feel like he’s fucking with you. The magic tricks are a joke, they have to be, because he’s referencing the way he’s mastering everybody’s perception of him, like the Tarot cards- the Fool is followed by the Magician, and he’s reversed the whole thing for fun.

                (You have also extensively studied the occult, looking for your answer, but magic proved inefficient. Science has also proved inefficient so far but you are frankly scared of what will happen if you lose that ‘so far’.)

                But then he goes goofy over one of his silly movies and you think, no, he can’t possibly have done any of it on purpose. He probably doesn’t even know how to spell Tarot, much less come up with an entire personality based on subverting the first part of the cycle. The magic tricks, the random bouts of genius cruelty mixed with kind stupidity, all of it- just… coincidence.

                Then he does something else unexpectedly brilliant and surprisingly cruel and you get sucked right back in again. The combination of psychology, your own personal issues, and an unsolvable case is addicting, and addiction’s a powerful thing.

                If for no other reason than the fact that your relationship with John is confusing, you talk to Dave. Dave is a weird one, and that’s saying something coming from you with your childish fantasies.

(Dave’s always telling you to ease up on yourself but being gentle with your empty wanting has never worked. Harshness doesn’t, either, but you at least feel like you’re taking steps against it, so it’s still better.)

For one thing, her name is Dave. Dave Harley, in full, and she looks a _hell_ of a lot like you. She looks so much like you, in fact, that if it wasn’t for her wearing her hair long “as some kinda statement about how I’m a hip girl despite the dudebro swag name, yo” (Dave is waging a one-woman war on English and, much to your own discontent, seems to be winning based on how often your own speech patterns slip into her horrifying homebrew slang), you’d practically be twin sisters.

You find this quite appropriate; nobody understands you like Dave does, which is usually a statement of twitterpation and hopeless teenage love but with you is a lot more platonic and… comfortable. Dave gets you, and so when you hare off on a thirty minute discussion of pony trivia you collected entirely so you could have a discussion about taxes with your father using horse metaphors he’ll never get, Dave rolls with it knowing it’s all just snarky broad horseshit and that you’ll get back to your main point eventually. The meter measuring that kind of stuff between the two of you is _always_ busted, you two are so good at it, and it’s damn nice to have somebody you can mouth off to _and_ with, somebody else to share everything with, the way you can’t with John or Jade.

And when you talk about the longing, which took you _years_ to get to, she hears you out peacefully because you asked her to do so without snark. And any time you bring it up since, she’s completely supportive. She’s never looked down on you for it, the way you yourself do.

In its own way, her support has kept you sane, convinced you that you aren’t some horribly broken lunatic. It is a task you repay in kind, because your dear sweet Internet sister is one of the unhappiest beings on the planet.

Dave Harley lives alone on an island in the Pacific which, if it were inhabited normally, would be fairly average in land size, but Dave’s all alone out there; the place is thus colossal, and Dave has turned her home into a fortress against an island that scares the hell out of her, though she will never admit it (she never admits anything, it’s like pulling teeth to get her to change her expression from stoic acceptance). Her grandfather is dead and, much to your own sorrow, stuffed, something that can’t be helping Dave cling to her already fragile sanity. Dave is very wealthy, which helps, but too young to have legal control of it, which doesn’t, and she never leaves her island- and you aren’t sure why, but Dave has privately asked you not to question why, and only hints at it the way she hints at everything, through shitty irony and rap. Something about a dog and nuclear death, and you’d _swear_ you caught flickers of a white canine beast in her webcam but Dave always turns it off too quickly for that. Maybe a joke. Probably not.

(The last is much more terrifying to consider, so you don’t consider it often.)

She spends her time making shitty ironic statements, being a hipster so hip that even Starbucks would tell her to tone it down, go home hipster, you’re drunk, to use the World Wide Web’s peculiar vernacular. She writes a webcomic called Sweet Jeff and Hella Bro, a work of… “art” so impossibly awful that you are certain your cause of death will read “read too many SJHB comics”, and hope only that your corpse’s no doubt exploded eyeballs will not ruin your makeup too much.

It’s all play-acting, of course, all the most heartbreaking form of pretend. Dave applies irony to her life to disguise its core meaninglessness, to apply by irony what she cannot get by normal means- fulfillment, and a sense of self-worth. She does not view herself as worth anything, somehow blames herself for her circumstances, and she hurts, she hurts so much that _you_ ache, and that’s part of why you are so fond of her and love her like the sister she _should_ be to you- her pain makes your own pain go away, makes it more bearable by giving you something else to focus on. Burdens are easiest when shared and what weighs down another may be easier for us to lift up.

Though, admittedly, Jade is also helpful in that regard. Jade Strider, to be precise. The Texan teenager has long black sleek hair that most girls would kill for, and has married it to a surprisingly masculine, if thin, frame; he is, to use a Japanese term you are unfortunately familiar with due to having spent more than a second online, quite the quote unquote “bishie”. You are not sure how he maintains it, and privately suspect that he must be bathing it in blood or some other more esoteric and sordid practice, and rather hope he is if only because that explanation is more interesting than the more likely mundane answer that he simply takes care of it.

Much as Dave resembles you, Jade resembles John, buckteeth included, but where they make John look harmless, it makes Jade look charming, approachable, a flaw in his otherwise too perfect appeal making him quite the approachable little goofball. He’s sex on a stick, as Dave has so cheerfully informed you, slim and muscled and the sweetest human being alive. Jade is also the girliest of all of you, amusingly, more interested in growing plants on a little rooftop garden and taking care of his Bro than doing more traditionally masculine things, though he is also an extremely talented sharpshooter; a skill he probably picked up via osmosis, what with living in Texas. His Bro, who runs an online puppet porn site (which is so fucked up it makes Dave’s issues look normal), is delighted to have such a feminine younger brother because it means someone can clean the apartment and cook, albeit Bro has repeatedly engaged in epic duels with Jade for reasons that are, at best, foggy.

 (John personally thinks Jade’s Bro wants him to join the military, but that’s mostly because John refuses to countenance the puppet porn as a source of revenue, denying that so many horrible people exist that Bro could support himself with it, and holds out hope that Bro is secretly military black ops and trying to make Jade worthy of joining. Dave thinks Bro is simply into irony, but you fail to see much irony in plush rumps and puppet dick. At least you don’t have to worry that Bro is beating Jade for being too girly- Bro himself is gay, and Jade, for all his effeminacy, is straight.)

At any rate, Jade is a good friend of yours, and the single most terrifying person you know.

(Late one night, you couldn’t sleep, had fitful dreams of suns and shadows you couldn’t remember but it made the ache so much worse, the need and want peaking. You checked Pesterchum just to see if anyone was on to talk to, take your mind off of it, but etherealBoggler (he’d changed from gigglingTerror recently for some reason, something about a troll) and turntableGrinder were offline. Only gloriousGuardian was online, and you clicked it, the name of Jade’s chumhandle, and asked a question under the name tormentedTraveler, how are you doing, the usual stuff. The reply had been _in time you will receive what you are waiting to inherit_. You shut your computer off and cried all night out of pure terror and shock and the sudden revelation of someone else being aware of that pain you keep inside yourself, though lack of sleep probably helped. The message wasn’t there in the morning- which would please you more if the chat client hadn’t also informed you that Jade had edited his messages before you woke up.)

…Yes, you don’t like to think about Jade much, for all that you do count him as one of your closer friends. Perhaps a review of your literary aspirations is in order.

…Ah, yes. Fantasy novels. As stated, the worst possible things that could ever have happened to you. You seek to perpetuate this plague of immaturity and inner pain by writing your own fantasy novels, a hobby you cannot quite convince yourself to stop, even though everyone you know is incredibly supportive of this activity and that is usually the surest way to convince a teenager to stop doing anything. It satisfies some part deep in yourself, is almost what you need to stop the longing… perhaps you will one day write a book featuring an androgynous protagonist with no pronouns, and that will make the pain end.

…But right now, you are going to open this strange package that was sent to you, that says SBURB on the front, and has a smiling little green face at the bottom.

 

**== > Be John Lalonde.**

Man life in New York sure is weird.

For one thing, it’s super stormy. New York doesn’t know what it wants to be, the ocean a calming influence sitting right next to the bitterness of the Arctic, ineffectually trying to shoosh-pap it into some state of calm that always ended up backfiring and causing massive winter storms. It was a seriously dysfunctional relationship.

(You know something about those, and you are the one person among your group of friends- _real_ friends, count ‘em, three, even if you have never met in person- who does not hide the dysfunction from yourself in some way. Well, Rose has a legitimately functional family, but _she’s_ dysfunctional so that’s a moot point.)

Mom’s downstairs, drunk again. She has only two moods- drunk and atoning. The atoning is worse. There is nothing more horrible than her sudden declarations that _now I’m going to be a good mother!_ and her earnest attempts to patch things up with you, try to be a mom. You hate them because you know they are for _her_ sake, not yours; they are the bandages with which she patches up her guilt, smooths over the rough edges where what’s left of her soaked conscience rises up from time to time, telling her precisely what she is. Thankfully, she’s drunk right now, and doesn’t notice that her only son spends more time with Internet friends than with real ones. Thank _God_ you are not crazy.

A lot of that is Jade’s doing, of course. He is your absolute best palhoncho. He is your _best. Bro._ He gets titles and shit with it. You can perceive, like a seer in one of Rose’s shitty slash fics, how amazing Jade really is, even if he doesn’t know it himself. He’s a knight coming from far off space to rescue your interplanetary princess ass, and you don’t even care how homo that statement sounds- besides, while you’re not a homo yourself, Jade’s Bro is, and he must be doing _something_ right to raise a guy as cool as Jade, so you’re alright with the flipside of human sexuality. You are brokay with the gay.

At any rate, Jade is to get back to your metaphor, Jade is the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Without someone as perky as him, you’d probably have given in to your… darker… urges.

(You’ve always liked to prank people. Frankly it scares you how easily that can be turned to _real_ cruelty, how easy it is to slip from bighearted messing with people to really _hurting_ them. Thank goodness for Jade, he’s managed to keep you off that edge… mostly.)

Rose also helps because she’s an outlet for some of those darker urges. It’s fun to just fuck around with Rose’s head, play a fool and then kick her over just to watch her scramble. She doesn’t quite trust her instincts enough yet, though she’s catching on- slowly but surely. It’s the most fun you’ve had in ages and frankly you are terribly attracted to that blonde girl, and when you guys finally meet up it’ll probably be romantic as shit… though given your relationship, which seems to be based on a mutual love of hitting each other’s buttons as hard as you can, you’ll probably think it’s more romantic to take each other places you hate.

Actually that does sound really romantic to you, for some reason.

Teen romance sure is weird!

You laugh at yourself and see if Dave’s online. Weird girl. You’d think she was hitting on you, except you know she’s after Jade, and Dave’s just weird- like seriously weird, starting with her name being Dave. And being rich. And living on an island all by herself with a giant dog.

Like you said, weird girl.

…You love her anyway, though, not in the “I love you” kind of way, but in the… you don’t know, love kind of way? The same way you love Jade and Rose, the reason why they always feel more real to you than the people you know in your physical life. You’ve always been able to see, like a future, or something, with the four of you, a whisper of the wind telling you how it’ll be like you’re one of the seers in Rose’s shitty slash fics. You don’t get that with other people.

…And that same whisper is telling you that this disc in your hands, this SBURB, is going to be important.

**== > Be Dave Harley.**

Oh it is so totally sick sweet to be you.

(It is not.)

For one thing, you are rich, rich rich _rich_ , you are the richest bitch on the planet and if it weren’t for being sixteen you could make Paris Hilton look like a saint, you are so rich and could descend so far into slutdom.

(It would be better than this.)

But you gotta stay here. With your nuclear powered death dog.

Yikes and goddamn.

You think anybody else would deal with this shit better. John’s… a _lot_ smarter than he lets on, is kind of a dick really, and you’re pretty sure he’d be able to handle what Bec is better than you do because he’d find some way to make the dog work for him, ‘cause if he’s anybody he’s Loki, even if he’s low-key about it (it’s a pun, badumtish). Rose would handle it because it’d distract her from her own problems, though that’s a bit like curing yourself of fleas by bathing in acid and then setting what’s left on fire. And Jade…

You can’t help but feel like this job should have fallen to him. Jade’s innocent. There’s no way around that, and not a drop of irony you can apply to that fact, he’s without irony, he is the irony antichrist, it is him. He’s so sweet, and so innocent, he’s like a bolt of sunshine in your life, a little space to breathe. (Probably why him and John get along so well, John’s a breezy bastard if you’ve ever met one.) Jade could deal with a superdog beastgod pretty easy, you feel, if for no other reason than because “being bothered by things” just isn’t something Jade _does_. Hell his brother, a true lord of irony if there ever was one, regularly beats the hell out of him and Jade just takes it in stride, though admittedly the beatings seem to be administered less in a “lol parental abuse” kind of way and more of a “I am harsh ninja sensei kiyah” way. Jade’s a hell of a fighter at this point, even if he’s not half as good as his Bro.

Yeah, Jade doesn’t do the whole “be bothered by stuff” thing.

(But it’s something _you_ do, isn’t it? Something in you is just primed for tragedy, can see all the different ways this could end badly. Superdog suddenly decides to eat you; superdog suddenly decides to send you to Mars; superdog escapes the island and kills everyone. You can’t help but think that Grandpa wanted this… _abomination_ contained, and you’ll do what Gramps wanted. Especially since you killed him…)

…God no wonder you write a shitty webcomic and compose ironic raps all day. You’d go insane otherwise, and that’s just not cool at all.

…Well, that’s not true. Even without your amazing webcomic (for certain very loose and completely ironic definitions of _both_ those words) and terrible raps, there’d always be Rose, there to keep you even and level (and she’s got more problems than you do, though hers are considerably less apocalyptic in scale. She fucks up her life, she just ends up brokenhearted and a shell, and while the thought tears you up inside, if _you_ fuck up, and don’t keep this damn dog here on this island, it kills _everybody_.)

Damn thing is like Armageddon but it barks and likes irradiated steaks, and you gotta _watch_ the goddamn thing. It already killed Gramps, way back when you were a young’un; though that’s because it thought he was attacking you, ripped Gramps to shreds. You barely had enough left to taxidermy the old man.

(There is a single advantage to your overwhelming madness- you can do things like that and they barely affect you. Or, more accurately, turning Gramps into a one-man ironic statement about death was the last straw, broke everything that was ever going to be sane in you and reduced you to this- half a robot, just running on empty and inertia.)

It’s all about clocks, in the end.

You watch them and they watch you. Measure the tocks, hear the ticks- every day is simply another day you have to count, you have to keep Bec happy, you have to keep the big dumb dog from killing everybody. It’s like a kid with his finger on the big red button, utterly mad and capable of so much death, and you’re just trying to keep it together for one more second, one more day. You do everything in steps, keep watch on the time… clocks telling you everything. Thank God (who you are terrified is a dog) you know time like you do.

(You wish God would free you of Bec. If someone would kill the fucking dog you’d worship them without regret. Bec is the chain around your neck.)

Your life has been reduced to such mere atoms that it’s all kind of… funny. Irony’s just an appreciation of life’s absurdity, after all, and there’s nothing more absurd than this- half the time you figure you’ve just gone insane, stupid little girl alone on an island dreaming that her dog’s some _thing_ , leering out of corners. You’re too scared you’re not crazy to really try doing anything else, though. And… you can’t help but think you’d never make up someone like Jade.

He’s just… if your life is a fairy tale, it’s Rapunzel, and Jade’s the only knight you’d let climb up your sweet-ass tresses. Which would hurt like fuck. And does Rapunzel even know the guy who climbs her tresses, or is she just jumping on the first weiner to present itself? Man, nobody talks about how weird fairy tales are, you should do a webcomic about that, Sweet Jeff and Hella Bro doing fairy tale shit. Hell fucking yes.

(It’ll give you precisely two hours, and you have time before Bec needs to feed again.)

…Or maybe you could boot up this weird disk thingy you got in the last package drop, something about a SBURB, Jade’s been bugging you to play.

 

**== > Be Jade Strider.**

Finally!

It is time to _start_.

You have waited your whole life for this. Rose has too, and it just worries you so much about her! She’s really great and sweet and the fact that she doesn’t know about the game, about what she will become, hurts her so much that you just want to pat her head and tell her it’ll be alright.

(Too bad you sleepwalk! And sleeptype, apparently. _That_ had been super-awkward! At least Rose didn’t say nothing about it later.)

You’ve always dreamed about the game, ‘cause Prospit’s weird like that. John has, too, but he’s a Seer of Breath, his dreams are a lot weirder than yours and he’s not really aware he’s doing it; he’ll figure it out. Part of what a Seer is belongs to mystery, aaaaand you think he’s going to lose his eyes but you haven’t told him that yet. Why bother? He’s a Seer, blindness is kind of what they do! Maybe he’ll get lucky and just end up with a blindfold. It frankly makes you a bit sick to think about because John is your brother, the way Bro ain’t, but you accept what you can’t change- ain’t that the point of prophecy? Can’t change anything…

You’re kind of excited for Dave! She’ll get to be a Witch of Time and Bec will stop being a problem like _really soon_ , though you can’t see quite why that will be- something’s blocking it, and you get the weirdest feeling that it’s become someone wants to… play.

(You can almost see the entity… something green, like newgrowing grass and powerful, ancient and almighty. Whoever it is, they seem benevolent, almost cheerful, like a kid reading a beloved book… though anything that strong makes you a bit paranoid.)

Anyway, regardless of that, Dave’s issues will really be helped by getting rid of Bec! And that’s great because, umm, you’re kind of in love with Dave? Like, horribly. She’s just so… heroic. All she’s done, keeping the dog on the island, doing all she’s done for a world she’s never even been part of… you’d tell her, if she’d listen, that Bec’s not dangerous, but things can happen in your youth to make a lie seem true and you can’t stop that.

Yeah, you’re kind of in love with Dave. Appropriate, really. What’s a Knight without a lady? Well, a Witch, but not all Witches are bad, and Dave’s great.

‘Course, getting into the game will do better for Rose than anyone. She’ll finally find what she’s been waiting for- the Heir of Light. Pure power.

(Though you saw, as a gift from whatever force it is that observes all of you, in a lime-green window, that there will be something dark and ugly touching Rose… and she bows to it? What in the world? You’ll have to save her… watch her. Knights serve Queens too, and she is an Heir.)

Yeah, this’ll all be kind of awesome! Well, some people will die- everyone on Earth, in fact- but you can’t stop that. Whole universes will be made! And you can remake humanity. On a million worlds, in fact, make a better reality than this place, where the magic and the wonder’s all concentrated in four people on the planet (or maybe a few others, there might be other players, but you know that there’s only four in your session).

And here it is, waiting for your hands. A disc, and a name, and a game.

(The presence laughs. It is ready- she? Yes, she, you think.)

You’re ready.

You put the disc in the drive.


	2. Darkest Before Dawn (go not gently into the light)

**The Four Suns**

**Chapter the Second:**

**Darkest Before Dawn (go not into the light)**

                **== > Be John Lalonde.**

                Oh bugger _this_.

                “ Rose?” you say into your headset. “ Rose.”

                No noise, not even breath.

                “ _Rose!!!_ ”

                “ Sorry!” came the usually elegant young woman’s _breathless_ reply. “ I just… John, your wall!”

                Oh, the wall was indeed the point of contention- specifically that she’d just thrown a bathtub through it. Using her mouse. Over the Internet.

                …What the _fuck_ kind of game are you guys playing?

                “ Hold on, I’m calling up Jade, this _has_ to be his fucking fault-“ you begin to say… and your phone rings.

                You pick it up, moving one headset earpiece over. “ Hello?” you say into your cell.

                “ Hey!” Jade’s bright, perky, feminine voice says into your ear. For all that your best friend is built like a goddamn truck, he’s higher-pitched than Dave. “ Umm, so you were going to call me and ask about Sburb, right?”

                “ Hell fucking yes I was going to call,” you say, giving your phone a glare that Jade can’t see, but you terribly hope he can feel. “ Just… what the _hell_ , Jade? Rose just threw my bathtub through my wall!”

                You hear a sound you know _very_ well- Jade sucking in his lip against his teeth. “ Umm, well, I can explain…”

                You wait patiently as Jade corrals his thoughts. Jade is really intelligent but also super hesitant offering information, like he’s got a bird sitting on his shoulders screaming _DON’T TELL THEM YOU FOOL_. Seriously of all the things you’ve helped Jade work on, getting him to actually _tell people things_ has been the most impressive. Not like his Bro ever taught him that- though Bro’s a good parental figure in a lot of ways, the man treats explanation- and hell, just _talking_ \- like it’s the gravest sin anyone ever performed.

                “ It’s… well, the game. It’s… more than a game. It’s how universes are made.”

                You suck in your breath, because you _know_ what he’s talking about. You’ve seen it in your dreams.

                ( _oh hell_ )

                “ John?” you hear over both headset and phone, as you spiral out of yourself... falling down into deep darkness.

                A strange voice speaks to you, and you almost see a color… not green, but almost blue…

                _John John John_

_DESCEND_

                **== > Be Dave Harley.**

                Well, balls.

                You block with a sword; the beast before you, half uranium, half darkness, and all ugly teeth, clangs against your sword and spins away in time to catch a summoned blade through the throat. You have no idea what your Witch powers are capable of at their utmost, but right now it lets you summon clockwork swords which is pretty dang sweet.

                The imp dies and leaves grist behind, which you collect. This is seriously the dumbest thing that has ever happened to you- you are fucking _LARPING_. By thirteen and a half fucks, you should make a comic about this.

                You click on your sweet alchemitized shades, the DUDEBRO SWAGSPEAKER. It was made with one of your comics, a telephone, and spare shades. It is MAGICAL.

                John’s on the line.

                “ So how’s my sweet-rad equipment coming along bro?” you ask him. He doesn’t immediately answer, so you say, “ John, come on, don’t pass out on me too, I know you did it to the other two, are you collecting pass out on my friends bingo or something?”

                “ Sorry,” he says sincerely, which doesn’t mean a damn thing; John’s better at sounding like what he wants to sound like than anyone. You cannot beat him in a lie-off, he is simply the best there is. Even when he’s tired he won’t breathe hard where anyone can hear, a remnant of what his mother’s taunting left him with. “ Just listening to something a little birdie told me. I think we’ve got a change of plans, Dave. The equipment you wanted me to make for you needs to be on-hold; we’ve got to get you into the Medium.”

                “ Why?” you ask, as you pluck at your War Robe of the Wardrobe. Best name ever for a sweet ninja-witch-rap singer outfit. You made it with some crappy self-made rap cds and one of Grandpa’s old armors.

                “ Well, to start with,” John says cheerfully, “ a meteor’s about to kill you in around ten minutes.”

                Huh, well, that sucks.

                “ Well,” you say casually. “ So how do we stop this mad happening.”

                “ Well, first, I need you to go kill your dog.”

                … You have been waiting to hear somebody say that for years.

                “ How?”

                “ Easy. We need him to become a sprite…”

                -

                **== > Be Jade Strider.**

                Something’s wrong.

                Your entry into the Medium went as planned- albeit it was a bit unnecessarily symbolic, involving a pedestal you had to shatter- and you have your two-times sprite ready, decked out in unfortunate bird and with a frog’s head because hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time. And John told you that a voice had told him that you’d all die if one of you didn’t prototype with something frog-related, so… you did.

                (John’s hearing voices. _Your_ voices, specifically, the four of you, future conversations that reveal secrets to him… and another voice, one that puts him to sleep every time he hears it, something white or blue or green or something, a color he hears. He told you because you are his best friend and you have _no_ idea how to help him with it.)

                You grit your buckteeth, suck in your lip. Something is _wrong_ , and not just because Rose still isn’t in the Medium yet. John claims she’s got time, an hour or so, but still… something’s _wrong_ , and it’s all related to that damn green thing. The entity watching over all of you- and ten boondollars says it’s whatever’s knocking John out from time to time- is doing _something_ and interrupting the normal flow of your session.

                It had seemed benevolent, but… what little, sporadic contact you’ve received with it since indicates that its intentions are… horrifying.

                It wants toys.

                You are not very certain how to go about dealing with it, though, so you go back to sniping.

                The imps do not expect military tactics. You wonder why none of them wield guns; this is much easier than it should be. The monsters, even the big ones, seem to assume melee weaponry as the default, and you are using simple tactics of nest, clear the field, find another nest, repeat. You’ve been slowly guncrawling across the landscape of this Land of Fighting and Frogs, a landscape defined by endless dueling arenas and training paraphernalia. John has been sitting in comfort in the Land of Words and Storms, having set up some kind of permanent defense system around his house while he busies himself directing the rest of you; Dave’s world is the Land of Hours and Chains, and it is, bluntly put, terrifying, a land of great clocks and shackles extending from slavering dog beasts to tiny female figures. A Land that reflected a soul in pain… you raged at it inside. You are a cheerful person at heart, and something in you loves… yes, you can admit it to yourself- loves Dave. You don’t want to see her hurt.

                You rather wish the central defining landmark of Dave’s Land wasn’t a giant version of her dead Grandfather being savaged to death by Bec, the white beast’ green eyes flaring.

                Green…

                You wonder about that.

                …What _shade_ of green, precisely?

                …This will demand answers.

                You hike up your gun and head to the next sniping nest, making your way to a headset to talk to the others, and wonder what Rose is doing.

                **== >Be Rose Egbert.**

                The color enwrapping you is purest white, tinged with a light blue, or maybe a light green- it’s faint, almost not there.

                _rOSE rose Rose rose Rose rose Rose ROSe_

It wants… something… from you. Something you shouldn’t have, something you don’t really want… you can feel it, a thin, wet tendril of something reaching out to your aching soul amidst all that white, a spoiling of that purity that you flinch against even as you yearn to accept it.

                _This is what you have been waiting for, this is your destiny…_

                _Yes_ , your heart sings back, and yet… and yet no. What was it you were doing before this? What needed to happen, how are you… you don’t remember…

                _Don’t fight it, Rose. This is necessary._

                And then the words go white as the tendril reaches you, a single splash of black against the white, corrupting as it went.

                You do not hear the words, and you drift in and out of consciousness as something else takes control of your body, blue and black like a bruise.

 

                **== >Be Jade Strider.**

                John’s voice is pure frantic terror.

                “ Something’s wrong with Rose!” he yells, and your blood turns to pure ice in your veins.            

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this one was hard to write. Been distracted with other projects, but it's back to the Fireverse for this round!
> 
> And the plot thickens. There is more than one interloper, and none of them are kind.


	3. Eternity Lies Before Us, and Behind

**Eternity Lies Before Us, and Behind**

                **== >Be Dave Stri-**

                **_No, we’re going to be changing that._**

**== >Be Rose Egbert.**

                This is necessary and it is good. These thoughts flow through your head, a sopor slime slopping through your thoughts to keep you sedated, an alliterative alchemy that impedes initiative and ideas. You move forward and strike with the needles, not knowing or seeing whose flesh you carve with them. This is needed…

                **_Have to force her have to fight her. Don’t kill, just… bend, beat her and we can make this a good place, so many cute little aliens safe and sound and no god watching over them playing with them writing her fiction and her fantasies with their lives and blood as page and ink_** and words to that effect.

                Whoever is in your head _talks constantly._

                But you are not really aware of being annoyed about that. You just keep moving forward, tearing down the walls of reality as you go, filled with the essence of the horrorterrors and something else, something old, so old the color is plain leached out of it, watching the world through an eyeless orb.

                **== >Now be Dave Strider.**

                “ We’re moving,” you announce to the others, calm and cold. God bless the fact you’ve spent a lifetime carefully hiding emotions, fearful of Bec’s reaction to them (after all, a look of fear was enough for the damn goddog to kill your Grandfather). The terror you feel at the idea of someone hurting Rose- _your_ Rose- is nearly overwhelming.

                The terror you feel at the idea that _you_ might have to hurt your Rose is worse.

                John’s moving ahead, scouting, and he’s hiding his emotions just as well as you are- a liar to the very end. Rose is his, too, if different from the way she’s yours, and so he moves like a whirlwind, guiding all of you towards her current position somewhere on the Battlefield, dodging the great battles where Prospit and Derse clash in their mindless, endless war.

                Jade… Jade’s freaking out. You don’t know why; him and Rose were never close.

                But he’s a sweet boy, maybe that’s all it is, and you have no more time to spare for his worry.

                You’ve got to get to Rose. She’s heading to the center, towards the White King- and none of you are even close to ready for the Reckoning. Your Sprites all freaked out when they realized where she was going, what her intentions might be…

                She’s been tearing through Prospit hordes right and left but not touching Derse’s troops. John says that he hears conversations about how Rose killed the White King and gave the Black King something that started the meteors coming, and then… nothing.

                That is not a good nothing to hear.

                You summon a sword into a pack of imps, send time-cloned copies of the blade into their throats- a tiny patrol you couldn’t avoid, John said it’d be this group, a basilisk, and an ogre and then clear on to Rose.

                You hope so, as John readies his hammer to fight the ogre, and you and Jade run over to deal with the basilisk.

 

                **== >Be John Egbert.**

                So this is how you lose your sight.

You dodge around the ogre, some great titan with blue-green eyes and covered in white cracks, the black corrupted by light. It’ll take your eyes pretty soon now- almost every voice agrees with that. Some big blast, burning them right out of your skull but otherwise leaving you unharmed.

You’ve accepted it because the only voices that talk about you _not_ losing your eyesight lead to conversations about how Rose doomed you all, because if all of you fight the ogre you all get blinded, and if none of you fight the ogre you spend too much time running from it- all the paths lead to ending except this one, where it takes you eyes.

If this is the last thing you will ever see you will see it well; your eyes drink in the light, the last they will ever know. The ogre is huge, horned, bearing a motley color like the one on the clown doll you threw into your Sprite for the hell of it, but most of the beast is just… broken, shattered by bright. Brilliance pours from the shining veins on its flesh, and you know- you just _know_ \- that what will take your eyesight will be the deathblow you give the beast, cracking it open to let that white-hot sun out.

(You hear someone saying _I’m so sorry John._ You don’t know who’s talking. You don’t particularly care.)

…Oh well. You knew this was coming.

(The funniest prank in the world is telling Seers the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but- and then making them deal with it. You can kind of appreciate the irony, even if used on you- that’s a Prankster’s Gambit if you’ve ever seen one, if of a cruel, cruel kind.)

You strike and dance, strike and dance, it’s powerful but you’re stronger, and you shut your eyes in a futile gesture of defiance as you leap up to bash its brains in and tear your own eyes out-

But there is a sound, the crackling green _zap_ of Space powers, but deafeningly loud- much louder than what Jade’s capable of. You don’t see it except as a flash of green through your eyelids, and you open them in surprise to reveal…

…Did you just step onto the stage of a live casting of _Mummies Alive?_

The stone and metal figure before you- which is female going by the stone breasts and carved wide hips, but then again it might be male considering the broad shoulders and thickly muscled arms, literally a chiseled physique in sarcophagus stone with the symbol of Space painted on its chest- stands a foot taller than you do, which is pretty impressive because you’re a pretty big guy.

(Rose always says that your build doesn’t fit you at all, that you should be tiny and sleek and zephyr swift… Rose. You are more terrified for your friend/rival/love? than you know how to say- and you _always_ know how to say.)

It bears a white wand in one hand and a golden cane in the other. It’s an Egyptian sarcophagus come to life, golden and moving, painted eyes over a Sphinx’s smile and beneath a great crown of green and gold. A great cobra curls at the top of the pharaoh’s headdress, green with glittering sapphire jewels; other snakes curl around the upper arms and the thighs, the sandals, in painted tattoos, in every color under the sun except red. The body is so well-made it only just creaks, the thinnest, highest whine of grinding stone- and you are struck by the sudden understanding that only you will ever hear it, that only a child of Breath and all the noise it bears can hear that noise. This is a shell made so well that it might as well _be_ its inhabitant.

Blinkless eyes envelop you, completely immobile- then crinkle in a smile anyway. The stone moves, after all, and even painted eyes can have lids. The Sphinx’s mysterious smile becomes a simpler, happier one, and the figure speaks, with a voice delicately female, surprisingly pretty and high-pitched, soprano sweet.

“ Be careful! That could have blinded you- it’s a trap set for a Seer!”

“ Uhh, yeah,” you say, distracted…

Because the voices are all talking about the day this woman, Lady British, saved your eyesight.

“ Lady British?” you say, confusedly. Your companions catch up, having killed the basilisk, and look at your new companion with guarded awe.

You do, too, because some of the voices are talking about how your eyes weren’t the _only_ thing she saved that day.

“ Hello!” she says cheerfully. “ I think you’ve got a little problem and I’d like to help!”

The cane disappears into a warp of Space and she stretches her hand towards you, the universal symbol of peace, friendship, unity.

You know _nothing_ about this being and you get the weirdest feeling she’s editing the voices you can hear- because all of them are full of praise for her, and you know _damn_ well that Dave, at least, would be contrary at _some_ point, if just to be contrary. You are not comfortable with accepting the help of a being with the power to screw with the one advantage you really have.

Your friends, weapons at the ready, look to you- dammit guys- Rose is the friendleader here, not you, you’re just the second in command.

But she’s not available right now, so…

You grab the hand and you don’t know if it was the devil or God you shook hands with.

“ Hey,” you say, “ name’s John Egbert and we gotta _go_.”

She giggles, and nods as the cane warps back into place. “ Yep!”

And then Space crackles all about you.

**== >Be Rose Egbert.**

**_So close._ **

The voice is furious. It wants wants wants **wants _wants_** this and it is slowly going out of reach.

**_But at least John… John…_ **

It talks about your John a lot… John. You feel something for him… what was it?

**_No no quiet down Rose quiet down focus focus focus_ **

                You’ve always felt so much.

                **_Quiet down quiet down QUIET DOWN_**

             A longing. A wanting. A book you wanted to write, about an androgynous protagonist…

                **_QUIET DOWN QUIET DOWN QUIET DOWN_**

                Androgynous because you kind of understand the transgendered, caught floating, half-between half-wanting, never wholly one or the other but desperately wishing… wishing for…

                What were you waiting to inherit?

                **_NO!_**

                You remember a title told through a game.

                Heir of Light.

                …From whence all this darkness? Something in you shudders as you face a white king, sad and noble, knowing his death as destiny and accepting it with a wisdom never to be acknowledged, the great martyr of the Battlefield who has no hymns sung in his name.

                You were never a child of the night. You want… you want _light_ … you want to stand angel-winged at the heart of a burning sun, you want to shake the world with glass swords in your hands. You don’t want _this_ , some other thing in your head, something so old it has no colors, except the echo of what may have once been inside it, something old and from somewhere else long ago

                (There was a moon in the sea, a moon in the sea, eight hundred times eight hundred years ago, a clockwork witch)

                **_SHUT UP!_**

                (A feeling like sleep washes over you, and you catch a single glimpse of a blank white room and a blank white throne, and a figure seated upon it marred with old blood, bleeding now and forever, bleeding still from a wound that killed it long ago, the only splash of color in the room. Of the figure and its blood you see nothing more than immensity of age and immensity of body before it takes you again, and you know no more.)

 

                **== >Be Lady British.**

                Sure! But be warned, it’s not all tea and biscuits being you!

                You’d think it would be. A Muse of Space… one of the few beings in any universe, in any existence, in all _reality_ , to be granted the title of Muse. And combined with Space, you are rarer still indeed- the most passive possible class, one of perhaps only a few hundred, in all the realities that will ever be.

                And rarer yet! You are a Cherub- one of only _two_ who have ever played the game.

                (One might say the _only_ one, but… you do not consider your brother the same person, no matter the unusualness of your circumstances. It is one of many things about your true nature you ignore.)

                One would think this would make things simple for you- that it would be good to be you, and never anything else.

                But it is not.

                You are alone.

                All that you are, all the specialness, the magic, the… the very _fantasy_ of your existence has left you alone. No one is there who can understand you; no one is there who can achieve the same heights you can, walk the same road. You hunger for something you cannot have- _companionship_.

                And over all the lonely eternities and forevers and alternate worlds you lord over, a Cherub still even though your power has grown, only one soul has ever called to that hunger in you.

                Rose Egbert. In her wanting you find your own wanting reflected, her need for something greater an echo of your need for something lesser. And you go to her, to grant both your wishes- to make of her a high priestess and of yourself a goddess, to raise her and lower you.

                (You know why every god has servants. It is _lonely_. A god must have a prophet if only to assuage its own pain.)

                Your pain has been endless, eternal, but she will make it alright. She has been waiting endlessly to, and perhaps you have both been waiting for each other- a lovely image, the two halves united at last, made whole by the other. Beautiful, to think perhaps that there was a _plan_ , perhaps written with scarred and smoke-stained hands by water-drinking beard-wearing soul from beyond the fourth wall.

                But first you must snatch her from the devil’s hand, and in your stone flesh, so much more beautiful than your true ugliness, ice runs through your veins from fear as you warp yourself and your prophet’s companions to the scene of the final battle.

                _Please be alright, prophet._

                (Do not leave me before we have even met.)

 

                **== >Be Dave Harley.**

                The crazy super pharaoh (pharoahess? What is the sweet genderflip on that name dog, yo) deposits all of you on the battlefield, which is a ruined and scarred mess of dead white corpses and dead white kings, crown all a’stained with blood. This is a slaughter even butchers would recoil from, the kind of casual devastation bombs leave behind. Your own powers recoil; Time was always tied to Doom, or at least that’s what your crazy goddog sprite told you, and something about all this death done too soon, all these clocks stopped, makes the ticking pendulum in your head hesitate in its swing. Even the Dersites, those believing in oblivion, pull back, frightened by the sheer murderous power this scale of ruin represented.

                She stands above it all, flickering with darkness, running on black power and white power so completely empty it is not light but void; they have drained the Heir of Light of all the sun she held within her, and your heart _breaks_.

                “ _Rose!_ ” you yell as loud as you have ever yelled, louder than ever since the night Grandpa died and the damn dog showed you what it _really_ was. Rose, Rose, sister, best friend, the one person you trust, even more than Jade, in a different _way_ than with Jade…

You don’t think. You, the great planner, the coolkid, the girl who has always had each step planned out, acts on instinct.

You wish you were there next to her, and you are a Witch so Time responds, the gears shift and the great clock goes

                Tick-

                You take a step towards her-

                Tock.

                You are there with her.

                “ Rose,” you say, surprised but your usual demeanor saves your life, you’re able to roll with it. “ Rose, come on, snap out of it.”

                She glares at you with eyes that do not see, and a needlewand raises to lash out at you with endless darkness. You sidestep to the sound of the gears moving with a

                Tick-

                You have enough time to wonder if this is what Jade’s Bro feels like when he’s flash-stepping.

                Tock.

                Behind her. Your sword lies heavy and hungry on your belt, her back an open wound begging to be made.

                You wrap your arms around her waist instead.

                (You would never hurt her, come a thousand upon thousand years. Time is not just Time, it is Truth, it is Finality, it is the power to say This Shall Be and _you_ say that you will never hurt her, and so this shall be.)

                “ Rose, Rose, _c’mon_ , you’re freaking John out. Come back to us.”

                She headbutts you fiercely. Your nose splatters red as your eyes against your shades and you fall backwards, into a

                Tick-

                This is the most goddamn useful trick.

                Tock.

                You’re on the ground, and there’s John, flying right at her with his hammer at the ready.

                _Shit,_ no! You try to yell but your nose is busted and you can’t breathe. The pharaoh’s right behind John and Jade’s lining up a shot-

                (And you’d swear, just for a second, that he wasn’t aiming at Rose, but at the statue… must have been the pain, made you see things.)

                John gets to her and he tosses the hammer in the air. Rose’s eyes follow it and John- blessed trickster- tackles her down, grabs her around the arms and the waist in a literal flying tackle. The space Egyptian tries to help but just touching Rose seems to rot her stone, flash-freeze her- she pulls away with bits crumbling off.

                In a voice that sounds terribly dismayed, the living statue yells, “ I can’t touch her! She’s holding back because of you three!”

                “ Good!” John yells as she tries to bite him, but he’s slippery _and_ he has foresight, so he just dodges around. “ I got a plan! Jade, come here _without_ your gun!”

                “ On it,” Jade replies, tossing the gun. He sees you, and stretches out a hand that you waive off. You’re fine. Fix the stupid nose later. You get to your feet shakily as Jade goes to tackle your friend while the guardian statue keeps watch on the Dersites, who seem ready to advance.

                “ Hey Rose!” John says, and he’s _laughing_ , because John is fucking crazier than all of you put together, even you and Rose with your problems, seems to delight in even savagery so long as it hits him as being ironic or clever. He dressed up as Joker for last Halloween and it unnerved you _far_ more than you wanted to admit at the time. “ Give me some sugar baby!”

                And he _kisses_ her, a massive half-bite liplock, big and open and wet and messy.

                She goes still for a second, tiny second, and some of the shadow slops off of her, sticking to the ground like dried oil, and then she starts fighting back but the struggles aren’t as strong as they were. John spits blood from bitten lips and laughs while Jade proceeds to get kicked right in his buckteeth before he gets her legs under control.

                “ Dave! Dave! Get over here! Your sister needs a hug!” John’s still laughing, the fucking nut.

                But he might be on to something.

                (Your sister- and that’s what she _really_ is, fuck genetics- is a strong woman, strong enough that even under _this_ she still exists somewhere. And maybe a little help will bring her out.)

                “ Aight,” you say heavily, sounding like you have a bad cold and not nearly as cool as you’d hope to sound, “ let’s see if we can’t care bear stare this shit out of her.”

                John really loses it at that, just laughing and laughing as Rose snarls and kicks at him, her needlewands scattered- John’s holding one in a bleeding hand while Jade managed to pry the other one out and away, to scatter across checkerboard floor to Lady British’s feet.

                You run to her, to calm her, bring her down, in a

Tick-

A moment, shining clear, your friends around a dark mass and the Lady British swinging staves against the crowd, earning you space against the end even as the meteors come raining down-

Tock.

You are there.

                Your hands wrap around the bloody, beaten, broken _mess_ that is your three best friends, and you put your head to hers.

                “ Rose, Rose, come back, we love you,” you whisper, doing your best to wish her home.

                Tick.

               

                **== >Be Rose Egbert.**

                There is a sound like a clock, somewhere. There is a sound like the breeze laughing and laughing through old high places, mocking the towers that reach for it even as it loves their audacity. There is a sound in all this darkness and it is above you, somewhere in the…

                Light…

                It shines down, a single golden beam of daylight fury, marking a tiny space to stand. Marking _you_.

It illuminates nothing but you, the darkness, and dusty, unused stairs, leading up.

                **_No no no no_**

                The voice is behind and all around, but… there is light, yet. Someone has cleared you a little room to catch your breath, given you a little time, made a space for you, that you may return to your light.

**_No stop it you don’t understand this is RIGHT I’m not the bad guy here!_ **

Maybe three someones. Three someones you love… even Jade, terrifying as he is.

**_Rose Rose no no I command you to stop!!!_ **

It would be worth it just to make the damn voice _shut up_.

You turn your feet to running, heading up the stairs with a dizzying sense of speed, the darkness rushing up right behind you but not as fast as you- there is a riverwind beneath your feet, picking up your heels, lifting you faster and faster. The stairs resolve themselves into a great circle winding ever upward towards a great booming clockface, and each tick sends you a few feet, each tock warps you just a bit further. The space between you and your pursuer grows and grows …

You reach the top, to stand shining beside the great transparent clockface, marking not midnight but high noon. There is a great sun outside blazing, golden white, the light filtering in to you and good and warm on your skin.

**_ROSE LALONDE, STOP!_ **

You do not turn your head to the misnaming monster to listen to it, but to mock it as you give it your best snarky horseshit smile. It is darkness skittering and stuttering outside the light’s radius, terrified to touch it, and you will have no more part of it.

You raise your arms into a cross position and let yourself fall backwards, through the glass, shattering at your touch to let you out into the light, in full view of the snarling monster.

**_No!!!!!!!!_ **

You do not feel the fall, because it comes back to you as soon as you are out, eager to be reunited with its chosen one. The sun bursts apart to reenter you because it was never a separate part of you, it _was_ you, and waiting for it has damn near killed you, but here at the end, all your parts are finally reunited; you are finally yourself again, you are whole, as you have never been since the day you were born.

(Noon, he tells you, when you ask what time you were born. Of course. There was no other time you _could_ be born.)

The flame flies into you to warp through your veins and you, to your embarrassment, _dance_ when it enters you, spinning on footsteps of purest air, hearing John’s laughter echoing as you move, half mocking but always- and this is important- half praising too, as genuine as the mockery. He’s like you, a thought you’ve often had but never really considered before; he’s the only one you’ve ever met who can handle your genuine and your sarcasm both, your snark and your sincere, excepting perhaps Dave, and Dave is comforting where John is provoking. Dave is a rock, but John is a hurricane- and you think you rather like being caught in the whirlwind. A mutually profitable arrangement; he seems to enjoy being burned, after all.

(Your beloved one. You will kiss him when you get out of this. Sun and sky, together at last.)

_Light._

The sun in your veins burns with holy fire, with salt and purification and all the words of the Testament Old and New calling upon all the prophets who have ever been or ever will be, under each scorched sand beneath every burning sun. You are not sure if you would call this power by any religion’s name because you would have to call it by all of them- this is holy fire, this is righteousness, this is what you have been waiting to inherit.

(Jade was right. Someday becomes today, eventually- Time has brought you to it, as, perhaps, it always would. A beloved sister always, even when she doesn’t know it. And Jade too, useful, a prophet trying to assuage pain- you forgive him his terror, and accept him as friend. He helped, too, and you will not forget this.)

You stand outside the tower as a wicker woman ablaze, standing on nothing but the air your beloved commands, to turn to the beast, and you raise a hand. You do not exorcise it, for that is what lesser priests do, those who must beg for this power from another.

You _cast it out_ , for _you_ bear the power and must ask for it from no one, and it cries out in futile defiance as you exile it to the screaming nothing between eternities.

 

**== >Be John Lalonde.**

You know she’s back when she kisses you.

You’ve been kissing her because, well, you love her… or at least, hate her enough that you would do anything to keep her. Some vital part of you is wrapped up in Rose. Without her, you are less.

And it was so, so close.

So you’ve been kissing her, hoping it would wake her up, your sleeping beauty, trapped in a nightmare, though she’s not really been kissing back. But when she comes to, it is the sleeping beauty who gives the prince the kiss, and she sucks you in like a drowning woman gulping down a breath.

(…Which isn’t totally inaccurate, you guess?)

“ Rose,” you say, muffled by the kiss. She pulls away.

“ John Lalonde, for once in your life, _shut up_ ,” and she kisses you again, gentle and strong as sunlight making flowers grow.

You ruin it with a laugh a moment later, and she punches you with a quick little jab to the gut.

(She’s going to be alright.)

Dave tries in vain to hide tears. Jade just seems confused.

(Not that you entirely blame him.)

 

**== > Be Dave Harley.**

She’s back, she’s back, you hug her tight as she kisses and punches John.

(Jesus that relationship is dysfunctional.)

“ Rose,” you say, and are ashamed to be emotional. You choke it down to be cool. “ Going crazy’s not cool, yo.”

“ Dave,” she says, and hugs you back- very awkwardly, Arms pinned and super-tackled and all that.

You’re too embarassed to be you right now, so full of hot sweet love for your sister returned to you, so go be somebody else.

 

**== >Be Rose Egbert again.**

“ Guys!” a voice you don’t recognize says. “ Umm, we’re about to be attacked!”

Your friends get off of you, and grab up weapons. You start to reach for yours but devastation remembered makes you flinch; you can’t quite bring yourself to touch the twisted needlewands.

“ Oh, I can help!” a voice says. You look up to see… a pharaoh?

…But the light within you sees more, sees the vastness of what this being is, eternities within it, forevers trapped in this shell of stone.

A god, then, Osiris arisen, or perhaps Isis, maybe even both given its androgyny. But you were not entirely wrong with your first thought… like Osiris it is a pharaoh, too, a godking godqueen god _thing_ full of forevers and possibilities.

And the light inside you almost lets you see… something inside?

“ Who are you?” you ask, staring at it- a _her_ you suddenly know now, even if the word doesn’t quite apply to a being like this- with your sun-opened eyes.

“ Lady British,” she says simply, and then, a second later, “ but I was born Calliope.” It sounds like something it took a lot of effort to say.

(Something inside her that fortune can see, a fortune _changed_ , someone who has built an edifice around themselves to change who they are, shifted their path; and fortunes, good, bad and indifferent, destined or changed, have _always_ belonged to Light.)

You nod to her. “ Lady British, then,” you say, and a stone face smiles back at you.

“ Yes,” she says, and lifts a hand bearing two needles of glass. “ For you.”

They fit tight and warm in your hands.

“ The Swords of Sunlight,” Lady British says, and it’s almost unnecessary; you half-knew the names as soon as she gave them to you. “ A… gift.”

You grip them and blades of purest light shoot out the ends. Well. You’re apparently a Jedi now. Unbidden, you laugh at the absurdity.

Lady British’s form doesn’t move, but your eyes- so wide open, all-seeing now that the darkness has lifted- sees that she shifts back on the inside of the shell. She’s… fragile, oddly, and she seems rather hung up on you for some reason, that half-fearful half-hoping skittishness that marks someone afraid someone they hold in high esteem will disapprove of them.

You do your best to do what your father taught you, and give her a genuine smile.

“ Thank you,” you say, and she curls back forward on the inside. You can almost see her… something green and winged, like an imp but the head… can’t see the face… only eyes, which are strange and flash in a thousand colors that seem to all be pool balls.

You wonder what she is, and why she cares what you think of her so much.

You shake your head. Questions can wait. Your friends trust her, apparently, given the way they jumped to obey, and so you will too.

“ Let’s go,” you say to her, and turn to fight, the Swords ready to cleave and purge.

You only barely hear her say, “ Yes, my prophet,” as the battle starts.

 

                **== >Be Jade Strider.**

                NONE OF THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPENING.

                That’s what you want to scream at them. _None_ of this- not Rose’s possession, not this Lady British bullshit, not this final battle on the Battlefield too soon and too early… damn it, not any of it!

                But no time. You reload the gun as you kick fallen weapons into Dersite throats, blast at titanic Knights who die neighing while giving a gun butt to Pawns that wander too close. Dave is behind you, warping about- and aren’t you the one who’s supposed to teleport? _None of this is right_ \- stone blades erupting from the ground and clocks marking the time with corpses and crushing pendulums. John’s a hurricane of hammers and strength, grabbing a Rook’s slamming hand and stopping it with nothing but mangrit, Rose leaping up behind him a flying amazon angel of death gutting and cutting with her gifts. You’re all leaping up your echeladders with each movement, each moment. The presence of Lady British is like having an ocean poured inside you, she’s making all of you so _strong_ just because she’s here- you wish an opponent somewhere else and somewhere else they go, washed away by the torrent of power channeled through you but finding its source in her. It.

                … _None of this is supposed to be happening._

                Your sprites move like gods too, even the ones that aren’t based on Bec- the goddog’s Sprite is death but so are the others, this is ridiculous. Drunk wizards, harlequins in business suits, shitty sword-slinging frogs and dog gods mixed with seashells; madness, utter madness. The battle you were _supposed_ to have was not like this, you were supposed to be God Tier… how does John not freak out, he _has_ to know…

                This is **wrong!**

Dave shouts a warning as the Black King, tired of the games, marches forward to finish it.

You barely remember the battle against the Black King, irony of ironies. He is always supposed to be the great titan, the final battle, an epic confrontation… but caught in your worry and having the quietest mental breakdown anyone has ever experienced, you are too busy in the battle to focus much on remembering it. You remember a loud song played too fast without speakers and Lady British giving a hand while apologizing for ruining the experience for you, and a final blow struck by Rose and John together, Rose stabbing a sword in a thick skull and John swinging his hammer down atop it to nail down the final blow.  You remember Dave getting tossed a hundred feet in the air and being on the ground in a second, teleporting to ignore inertia and physics and death all three.

When it’s all over, you just stand there and stare at your friends, standing before the door of Reward on the bloody and broken Battlefield, Derse fleeing while what is left of Prospit shouts in triumph.

Lady British sighs. “ So that went belly-up! I do apologize, if I’d thought that whole mess was going to happen I’d have intervened sooner. I wanted to wait until we could all meet on more equal terms…”

She sighs again.

“ Why?” Rose asks, friendleader now and forever. That, at least, has not changed.

“ Because…” she begins slowly,” I wanted to ask the four of you something.”

“ What?” you ask, not in the mood to play coy. You reload your gun and snap it ready, moving behind your friends, with a sinking feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach.

(You have lived your whole life knowing what tomorrow would bring; it is awful to be cut off from that. You wonder how other people stand it.)

“ You know of the nature of reality, do you not? Dave, Jade, you two are Time and Space, the fundamentals of reality. And Time creates doomed timelines.”

“ Yes,” Dave says slowly, cocking her head. “ Failing to see the point here, but maybe you hid it behind more Egyptian stonework, seems to be your kind of thing.”

“ But, Jade, what if there was a Space where those timelines could exist? A place outside the Alpha Timelines, a place for every possibility, beyond even the dreambubbles. Where doomed timelines did not die but were spared. Could Space do such a thing?”

There is a pit before you as her question answers everything you have ever asked yourself in the last few minutes. Oh.

Oh.

Yes, yes Space could do it… powerful as Time, its equal and opposite. Space could carve out a place, make room, oppose Time and its restrictions both. It could…

It could defy Fate, with enough power. It could make a prophet’s dreams come false.

The pit swallows you up.

                “ Excuse me?” you say in a too-tight squeak of a voice, like a little girl badly embarrassed at her first slumber party. Surprise is an unexpected and terribly unpleasant feeling for someone who has seen the future their entire lives, who has never even really grieved for their losses because… well… you’d had time to get over them. You’d always known, and you couldn’t change that…

                …But none of it was… necessary? All that you’d done, all that you’d suffered through, the nights spent crying over a Bro not yet dead? It was all meaningless?

                “ Space,” the great pharaoh rambles on, blithely ignorant of how still you’re standing, of how much like falling this feels like. “ Space _can_ do it. I should know. I am… something special, a goddess in truth. And my power, born of Space, is keeping this timeline- _all_ timelines, in fact- intact. There is a multitude of realities out there, all of them needing my protection-the _Space_ I provide for them to live in. I have freed us all from the constraints of Time. Doomed timelines can drift to me, to be protected from cosmological inevitability.”

                She sounds proud of herself, pleased, a job well done.

                You want to fall to the floor.

                “ Yes, yes, I suppose it could,” you say, adjusting your glasses, and none of the others really notice how you look because they’re still riding the adrenaline high of the battle, a high that just makes you sick inside, contrasting with the way your spirit feels.

                None of it ever mattered.

                She says some other things, the group discusses what to do now- Lady British is suggesting that all of you stay here, become God Tier before exiting the door, as it’ll be harder to do it later, and Dave launches into a twenty minute discussion of grinding for level-ups that Rose makes worse and that sends John into apoplectic fits of confusion that he’s playing up so they’ll laugh- smarter than he acts.

                Smarter than _you_ , at any rate. You stand at the back and simply _shake_ , hands pale as clouds under the Texas sun.

                You stare at them as the revelations crash through you, upsetting all you are. You’ve spent your whole life… your whole _life!_... obeying. Obeying the visions you’ve seen, obeying the voices in your head, obeying the game. They told you the future and you listened- listened and didn’t warn the others, for fear of warping the future, twisting it beyond recognition. After all, it was meant to be, wasn’t it? That was how it worked.

                And yet… and yet none of it was ever supposed to happen at all? This is just a doomed timeline whose execution has been momentarily stayed?

                …You wonder if this is what falling out of faith feels like, if this is what losing your religion feels like. The floor has fallen out from under you and you gaze at the world with new and fearful eyes.

                Your hands are still shaking as you finally come up for air from your sea of terror, and hear Dave speaking.

“ Well that’s good on you and pretty awesome considering I think that means we should all be dead now, but I’m kinda not sure what you want with us. Unless, you know, you just wanted somebody to know, FYI I’m God, we cool, peace out.”

Lady British giggles, pleased, and all you can think about is how much you want to put a bullet in her fucking skull.

“ No, it’s something else! I can’t do it alone. I’ve been… _alone_ … too long. And one of you here… one of you here called to me. One of you here knows what that feels like, what longing and wanting feels like.”

Rose and Dave gasp in unison, tiny indrawn breaths. Your own is starting to come in roaring tides, shaking faster and faster.

It is John who notices, of course, and he bumps you hard with an elbow. He has always been your best friend and watchful eye.

And it’s completely _meaningless_ because you are all _ghosts_ , you just don’t know it yet.

( Though it’s useful because you were _this_ close to just shooting her and you saw her fight enough to realize it’ll take many bullets to kill her. No, it’ll take more than what you’ve got now...)

                “ You okay?” he asks, eyeing you with those blue pupils.

                “ I’m fine,” you lie to John. It is the first lie you have ever told him.

                It feels good on your lips, like water turned to wine.

                Lady British has ignored you two to focus on the girls. “ Rose Egbert,” she says, and her voice is heavy and sad. “ I’m sorry it happened like this. I wanted… I don’t know what I wanted. Maybe just to get to know you. So, if you like, I don’t want you to feel pressured…”

                “ Ask,” Rose says, kindly, hearing something of herself in words of longing and want. The statue smiles.

                “ I was hoping to make this, I don’t know, perfect; I’ve wanted a companion for so long. A prophet, and companions, and I’m making a _mess_ of all this…”

                It’s surprisingly vulnerable coming from a giant stone god statue, and you can see your companions warming up to her. “ No, no, it’s ok,” Rose said, chuckling. “ We’ll figure it out. I believe you suggested we grow stronger before leaving through this door?”

                The goddess nods. “ Yes! We’ll talk as you go through your Lands!”

The conversation descends into discussions of strategy and trivia and general joyfulness, and it occurs to you that maybe you should play along. You should be happy, too, and so you will make yourself be- you’ve long practice at not telling your friends what you’re feeling, after all.

A kernel of a plan- long-range, but there- forms.

You force yourself to relax as you ponder what you will do now, the dispossessed prophet in the land of gods and dreams.

                (Accept or deny, that is the only real choice, and all you’ve ever done is accept. You accepted the visions and you accepted what would happen…)

                (Perhaps you will not accept this. Perhaps you will try defiance for a change- and not the sturdy acceptance, but the slow kind, the waves that eat the shore.)

                (Perhaps you will see how solid this new goddess really is.)

                You don’t know you’re smiling, but when you do find out, you’re surprisingly glad.

                (But the others don’t tell you that you smile like a shark.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god this took forever... but now back to the trolls. Skip along in time, Rain, we're coming upon the end- and another beginning.
> 
> Jade got real fun to write halfway through this. :D


End file.
